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Welcome to The Globe and Mail’s news quiz. Join us each week to test your knowledge of the stories making the headlines.

This week: We’re smack dab in the middle of the holiday season, but the news never stops, so here we go. A major court decision in the United States could mean that former president Donald Trump will be barred from running for office again in 2024. He is the front-runner for the Republican nomination, and the decision is expected to be followed by a legal battle that could reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

Also this week, an eagle-eyed Globe reader found some similarities between a series of newly exposed fake Group of Seven sketches in Vancouver and the work of another prominent artist. Plus, holiday retrospectives and best-of lists have been running rampant.

Do you remember these stories? Take our news quiz to find out.


1Which of these gift requests was not on the list of The Globe’s most ridiculous gifts children asked for this season?
a. A pear
b. Peace and quiet
c. An entire water treatment plant
d. A dog-human translator

d. A dog-human translator. Among the other submissions were a live wolf, a crash helmet, and a grappling hook.

2Still on the holidays, which film was voted the best holiday movie by Globe readers?
a. Elf
b. A Charlie Brown Christmas
c. National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
d. Home Alone

b. A Charlie Brown Christmas. The 1965 animated film ended up victorious after four rounds and more than 64,000 votes, beating out other classics such as The Muppet Christmas Carol, Die Hard, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

3Just one more holiday question (sue me, ‘tis the season). Visitors and tourists alike gathered at the Mic Mac Mall in Nova Scotia this month to see Woody. What sort of holiday attraction is he?
a. Santa’s younger brother, who gives toys out early
b. A huge animatronic Christmas tree with a face
c. A holiday-exclusive roller-coaster ride
d. A groundhog who picks the top toy of the year

b. A huge animatronic Christmas tree with a face. The 17-metre-tall Woody was reintroduced in 2021 with a facelift after a 15-year hiatus, and has become a local sensation.

4The Supreme Court of which U.S. state declared Donald Trump ineligible to hold the office of the president this week?
a. California
b. Texas
c. Colorado
d. New York

c. Colorado. The Colorado Supreme Court upheld a lower-court ruling that Trump engaged in insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, when he delivered a speech before crowds broke into the U.S. Capitol building in Washington. The U.S. Constitution bars insurrectionists from seeking federal office. An appeal of the decision is expected.

5True or False: A volcanic eruption in southwest Iceland destroyed the small fishing town of Grindavik.
a. True
b. False

b. False. Though authorities evacuated the town’s 4,000 residents as a precaution last month, officials reported the lava appeared to be flowing away from Grindavik. The volcanoes in that region have been dormant for more than 800 years, but recently reawakened in 2021.

6Toronto City Council voted to change the name of Yonge-Dundas Square this week. What is the new name?
a. Yonge Square
b. Rob Ford Square
c. Toronto Metropolitan Square
d. Sankofa Square

d. Sankofa Square. The city has long been pushed to rename streets and landmarks named after Henry Dundas, a Scottish politician who had participated in prolonging the transatlantic slave trade. A staff report describes “sankofa” as a concept originating in what is now Ghana that “refers to the act of reflecting on and reclaiming teachings from the past which enables us to move forward together.” City council announced it would not be renaming Dundas Street.

7McGill University announced it will be offering new scholarships to Canadian students from outside Quebec. What spurred this move?
a. The provincial government hiking tuition for out-out-province students at English schools
b. Rent increases in Montreal’s downtown
c. A drop in out-of-province ticket sales for the Osheaga music festival
d. More students in Quebec enrolling in Ontario universities

a. A tuition hike for out-out-province students. The newly-created Canada Award scholarships would be worth $3,000 annually and guaranteed for four years, in an effort to offset the tuition hike, which would raise the price to $12,000 from around $9,000. The new rules also require students to have some fluency in French by the time they graduate.

8Lucasfilm announced its plans to create a new dubbed version of the 1977 Star Wars: A New Hope into which language?
a. Esperanto
b. Haitian Creole
c. Ojibwe
d. Basque

c. Ojibwe. Lucasfilm producers reached an agreement with the Dakota Ojibway Tribal Council and the University of Manitoba to record a dubbed Ojibwe version of the iconic movie, with auditions expected to take place next year. Lucasfilm says Ojibwe was chosen because it is the most spoken Indigenous language in Manitoba, Ontario and Minnesota, with about 320,000 speakers across Canada and the U.S.

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